Texas Child Care Closures
Texas has lost 21% of child care providers from March 2020 to September of 2021. Out of those closed programs during that time, 41% of the providers served infant and toddlers, and 79% of them were child care homes. As a result, Texas had an additional 242 communities become child care deserts. However, only 2.9% of TRS programs and 1.6% of programs that received stabilization grants closed from March 2020-September 2021 suggesting these programs had protective effects.
With support from Child Care Aware of America™, CHILDREN AT RISK presents the Texas Child Care Closure Map — an interactive tool to explore the impact of pandemic closures on child care availability.
CHILDREN AT RISK seeks to answer the following question with our child care desert map: How has the COVID-19 pandemic effected the availability of child care in Texas communities?
Methodology
The data analyzed by Children at Risk in partnership with Child Care Aware® of America was provided by the Texas Health and Human Services Commission (HHSC) and contains operational status of child care providers from March 6th of 2020 to September 21st of 2021 as well as 2019, 2020, and 2021 snapshot data from the Texas Workforce Commission (TWC) including child care subsidy enrollment and TRS status. All child care providers regardless of age of children served were included in this analysis, though child care homes were only available after the first 6 months examined due to availability from HHSC. A closure is defined here as a child care provider with an operation status not listed as open at the end of the period examined.